Gibson's so-called "fretless wonder" got a bit more futuristic with the arrival of the silverburst finish in 1978. This example is in very good shape, with minimal wear and the greening that often occurs on vintage models.
Within this general rising tide of Les Paul Custom popularity and value, today's focal model, the silverburst Les Paul Custom, has seen an even more pronounced jump. These guitars were produced by Gibson starting in 1978 in very limited numbers and underwent a few spec changes before being discontinued in the mid-'80s. Sale prices on this specific group of guitars surged 28 percent in 2020 over 2019, with a 52 percent increase in prices since 2017. Just a few years ago, original silverburst Customs were selling comfortably in the $3,000 to $5,000 range. Today, we're seeing the best examples go for more than double that.
The basic configuration of the single-cutaway Les Paul has remained no nonsense for more than 60 years, with two pickups, four dials, a 3-way toggle, and a Tune-o-matic bridge at its core.
While there are always a variety of drivers behind such a jump in the pricing of a vintage collectible guitar, an artist or stylistic association is certainly part of the equation. Customs claim a certain reputation as metal guitars—think Metallica, Mastodon, and Zakk Wylde—and while plenty of classic-rock titans have employed them over the years, it could be that there are more metal and hard-rock fans getting into the vintage market than in previous periods, driving up prices. For this group, a dapper Les Paul Custom makes a lot more sense as a guitar splurge than something like a sunburst or goldtop Standard.
With no belt rash or other notable dings or scrapes on the back of its mahogany body, this guitar was handled with care. Note the well-defined back binding and lack of chipping along the edges, too.
This column's featured guitar is an original 1979 in very good vintage condition, listed on Reverb by Nationwide Guitars of Cumberland, Maryland, at $8,999 as we go to press. It sports the specs typical of its year and model: a 3-piece maple top with a mahogany body, a medium C-shape maple neck, an ebony fretboard with white binding, a bone nut, mother-of-peal block inlays, a Tune-o-matic bridge, a pair of humbuckers, a 3-way pickup selector, and a black version of the usual Les Paul dual volume and tone controls. Note that the finish shows some greening, which is typical of vintage silverbursts.
True to its roots, this Custom sports a larger headstock, which identifies it as a product of the era when Gibson was owned by the Norlin Corporation.
In the case of this month's silverburst, we can confidently point to the 2020 launch of a Custom Shop reissue of Adam Jones of Tool's trusty '79 as the culprit. This sort of high-profile reissue often has the effect of spurring collector interest in its vintage counterpart, and this can be even more of a factor when the new reissues are sold at prices that are similar to or higher than the originals, which is the case with this model. The Adam Jones 1979 Les Paul Custom VOS was also teased for a long while before going into production, creating more sustained silverburst hype, and this publicity was only amplified by news of a batch of these guitars being stolen this past November. While our guitar has some of the aforementioned finish greening in its center silver section, it's retained its original silverburst glow better than many of its brethren, which is appealing to collectors and players alike.
The nut on Micro-Frets guitars features a fine-tuning mechanism using screws for precise intonation.
Altogether, the company produced fewer than 3,000 instruments, which aficionados typically classify into one of three eras or styles of production. The company's Style 1 guitars feature 2-piece semi-hollow bodies held together by clips and bear a pronounced seam around their sides, created by a gasket. They also had grille cloth covering a small soundhole. Style 2 eliminated the gasket and grille cloth. Style 3 scrapped the clips and featured glued 2-piece bodies. While Micro-Frets never achieved anything near the notoriety of a Fender or a Rickenbacker, the peculiarities of their designs solidified them as a cult favorite and left many fans wondering what might've been if the company had kept going just a bit longer.
The Micro-Frets logo makes clear who invented this vibrato system, which was designed for improved intonation and is capable of radical full-chord dives.
The reason for this fandom comes from these guitars' reputation for quality, tone, and innovation. Micro-Fret guitars include an idiosyncratic “Micro-Nut," which allows players to intonate each string individually at the bridge and via an adjusting screw on each string at the nut. On the other end of the body, most Micro-Frets guitars built after their earliest phase sport a “Calibrato" vibrato tailpiece. Like the nut, this system offered a new level of adjustability over each string (anticipating, in some ways, later designs like the Floyd Rose). There's also the body construction style found on most Micro-Frets instruments, centering on a 2-piece body with a circularly routed cavity. There's currently a prototype listed on Reverb that shows an early instance of this strange approach.
Some of the badge-of-honor wear marks on this Stage II indicate, perhaps, that this guitar has literally hit the stage. Also, note the seam where the halves of the body are glued together.
Today's featured guitar is a 1971 Stage II, for sale by Guitar House of Tulsa. The Stage II is one of the more common Micro-Frets models on the vintage market, and this one is in very good shape with just the normal play wear and scratches you'd expect. It features two of the standard-issue Micro-Frets P-90 pickups, which were designed by Bill Lawrence. They nestle next to a cool bi-level pickguard. In the lower portion of that pickguard are standard single volume and tone dials, with a pair of toggles. One is a 3-way switch for the pickups, and the other is a special “Hi-Fi" circuit designed by Lawrence to tap the pickups at about 80 percent of their windings. In demo videos for this model, you'll hear a clear, chiming tone that sounds terrific alone or paired with a fuzz pedal or lower-headroom amp for breakup. Noted Micro-Frets players include Carl Perkins, Mark Farner of Grand Funk Railroad, and Martin Gore of Depeche Mode.
Micro-Frets offer an intriguing slice of vintage American guitar craft that can be had for significantly less cash than similar-era guitars from the majors. While some of the rarer and more bizarrely finished Micro-Frets models can command higher price tags, more standard examples like this Stage II typically run in the $1,500 to $2,200 range. Not bad for a small-batch-built guitar with features you won't find anywhere else on the vintage market.